Strategic management: Amazon.com

Résumé du document

For this second Strategic Management assessment, we decided to study the case of the online retailing website: Amazon.com. We chose this company as we consider that the company's history and especially its development both across industries and internationally are extremely interesting to study in terms of strategy. The evolution of the company's strategy over the years, the refocusing the company did from 2001 and the future prospects of Amazon also motivated us to study this company.

Our study is divided in six parts. The first part provides the reader with an historical background of the company since its creation in 1994. Afterwards, we provide an overview of the online retailing industry in the second part, before analysing it in the third part. In the fourth part of this paper, we narrow down our study to the company in itself, studying its strategy. Finally, the fifth part of the paper details the present situation of the company and outlines its future prospects in terms of development and opportunities.

Extraits

[...] SWOT The internal diagnostic indicates several strengths and one main weakness. One of Amazon's main strength is its brand recognition due to the fact that Amazon was the first website in which many consumers purchase books, CDs online. Also, Amazon do not hesitate to make massive investments to reach long-term objectives. Another strength reside in its high customer satisfaction which allows the company to increase its annual spending per customer. On the other hand, the major weakness of Amazon is the optimization of its search engine which can provide confusing results: several times the same article or missing relevant items. [...]

[...] Seriously, they're banning gay books, The Inquisitr, Nichenet Pty Ltd. Available from: http://www.inquisitr.com/21776/amazon-hates-gay-people-no- seriously-the yre-banning-gay-books/[2009-04-15] Hartman, Bezos, Kaphan, S & Spiegel, J 1999, Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network, World Intellectual Property Organization. Available from: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=1999013424[2009-04- 10] Laseter, Houston, Wright, J & Park, J 2000, Amazon Your Industry: Extracting Value from the Value Chain, Strategy Business. Available from: http://www.strategy- business.com/press/16635507/10479[2009-03-12] Market Watch 2009, Amazon.com Inc, Market Watch. Available from: http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/profile.asp?symb=AMZN[2009-03-04] Marshal, M 2006, Amazon's Vision? What vision?, Beat Venture Nov Wordpress. [...]

[...] Strategic Group Analysis The last analysis done for the industry is the strategic group analysis. Because of the company's diversification, Amazon operates in a wide range of industries, which makes a general strategic group analysis irrelevant because the competitors are different according to the industry. Therefore, we will focus our analysis on the music, video, book and entertainment retail industry, as it is the company's primary industry. In order to build a strategic group mapping of the industry, we used two parameters: the company's geographic coverage on the one hand, and the product range on the other. [...]

[...] That is Amazon's strategy. On the other hand the mission of the company is focused on the main Amazon's business, online retail services through a website. It used to sell only books, but it has diversified its core business and now there are 34 different categories. In addition, Amazon operates other websites that enable search and navigation; comprehensive movie database; and Amazon Mechanical Turk, which provides a web service for computers to integrate a network of humans directly into its processes. [...]

[...] Economical: We are currently living a rapid growth in the e-commerce world. Online sales are rising and the industry is taking advantage of it. Avoiding distribution costs the company profit is higher. Social: the concept of online company is something new, and this limits the access to it only for young people. It remains some people that do not trust paying by Internet, but this number is continuously decreasing day by day. Technological: The Internet is having a deeper penetration in households but there are still many people that do not have access to it. [...]